Posted
by
Hemos
on Monday January 16, 2006 @08:00AM
from the most-likely-not-binding dept.

linumax writes "Taiwan's parliament has voted to end its dependence on Microsoft software, demanding that the government reduce purchases from the software giant by 25 percent this year. The resolution, passed on Friday, is an attempt by the island's law-making body to end the near monopoly Microsoft has with local government offices, a legislative aide said. Local newspaper Commercial Times said however that the resolution may not be binding because it runs against fair trade regulations in Taiwan. Officials at Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission declined to comment."

After Microsoft fits them with software, the standard procedure includes:

- Boot up missile command system.- First thing you do is install latest security patches, or else some kid in San Jose, California is going to take control of your missile.- Log in to Hotmail.com to get the target coordinates from your superior officer. You will find it buried somewhere in the middle of 80 or so M3NSGR0WTH spams.- After your clear the pop-up messages blocking the launch widget, launch the missile.- Restart whole prodecure after missile crashes in the blue ocean of death well short of its target.

More importantly microsoft offers china the source code to windows, seriously it is really rather suprising that taiwanese government hasn't moved much more quickly to protect itself from the implied risk to it's economy of sustained cyber warefare.

It makes you stop and think about the number of exploitable bugs that the chinese security angencies have discovered and produced software exploits for (unpublished of course, well at least for the time being).

One thing I have noticed watching Asian films is how much emphasis there is on characters who are of ambiguous morality. There are also pure good/evil characters, and typically the good characters will have to work with the people in the gray area in order to accomplish the good that they are trying to achieve.I think it is possible that Taiwan is merely following this delicate balancing act--they have to allow themselves to be somewhat in bed with the mainland even though there are parts of that deal they

Since everybody's tripping over themselves in a rush to be in China, as it's #1 in the "What's Hot" list, I don't see how the Taiwanese businessmen are any different. Like everybody else, the Taiwanese have their own "Benedict Arnold" CEOs.

Last time I checked, the Chicoms are not the only ones who have a problem with "Taiwan authorities" attempting to re-draw political boundaries. The US administration also get VE

The refered article says: "Local newspaper Commercial Times said however that the resolution may not be binding because it runs against fair trade regulations in Taiwan. Officials at Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission declined to comment." Why now then, and not 10 years ago? What's the drip of water that flooded the bucket? (Dutch saying translated to bad english).

The dutch version is "De druppel die de emmer deed overlopen" or translated "The drop that caused the bucket to overflow".

The dutch saying however is superior, naturally being dutch, as it neatly combines with the other saying "a drop in a bucket". Wich is used often to show something having little to no effect. True or not, enough drops and the bucket still overflows. I think the english version is a crack in the armor? One crack doesn't matter but they add up until your standing naked on a battlefield.

It's not MS that was against fair trade regulations, they're saying that a resolution aimed specifically at MS may be against the regulations. As for why they're doing it now, my guess is they've decided linux has become good enough to replace windows.

If past form is anything to go by Ballmer or another senior executive will be booking their flights to head down and do a deal. Expect a large discount to be forthcoming that would allow the government to continue with its purchasing and still meet the 25 per cent target.
It's happened before but the question is how long Microsoft can continue along that route. Discounting is all very well but once more governments get in on the game it's going to start costing.
Why is it one supposes that Microsoft seems to move faster when a government threatens to stop sales than when they threaten it with an enquiry? This tells you a lot about the effectiveness of competition regulations in a WTO world.

Yes I expect this is probably true.The question is whether their target for this year is to reduce Microsoft products by 25%, measured in dollars, or in userbase/systems-installed. If it's in dollars, then MS could discount their products by 25%, and business would go on as usual. Obviously I'm sure that would not be Microsoft's preferred outcome, but given that the marginal cost of each install is essentially zero (assuming that they're using the same media over and over) they're still making a ridiculous

It's happened before but the question is how long Microsoft can continue along that route. Discounting is all very well but once more governments get in on the game it's going to start costing.

Costing what!? It's not like they didn't cover the cost of producing Windows hundreds of times over by now. If you mean "lower profits" then yeah, but to Microsoft it's probably worth it. Lower profits is better than nothing.

No, I'd be more worried about other governments starting to get pissed. It's not nice to pay premium price for Windows and see that others get it for much less.

The way Microsoft affords to juggle with the pricing on their products is unique to both software and selling in general. They practically have a special price for any market, as long as it sells for something, anything. Kinda reminds me of certain illegal substances...

>It's happened before but the question is how long Microsoft can continue along that route

Short answer, For ever.

Think about it, with their creation/distribution costs they could probably sell each copy of windows for a few dollars--maybe ten, the rest is profit.

In fact, I'm pretty damn sure they have already made back all the money they invested into every product they have created so far, so if they were to charge $1.50 per download for all their current products, they would still make money.

Convicted monopolist? Hahaha! Seriously dude, learn the facts... like what they were really convicted of.

Seriously though... let me get this straight... you would rather have OSS gain through legal maneuvers and laws rather than open and outright competition?

Quite a shame really as such subsidizing of OSS tends to show that it is too weak to stand on it's own against Microsoft and the other big players and instead needs to be subsidized by governments in order to give it a chance.

So under what set of FUD is it that you beleive MS is *not* a convicted monopolist? Pay close attention to #2 there of the Sherman Act.

I dunno about the OP, but I would prefer to have free and open competition for OS. Unfortunately, we havent had that for at least a decade now - MS has and continues to see to that by its use of monopolistic lock-in strategies that prevent potential customers from objectively evaluating multiple options - since their data is in secret-proprietary MS format, and/or their business partners are only willing/able to communicate using secret proprietary MS formats, they have no choice but to use MS, even if it is a royal suck-ass POS. Add in that MS has and continues to force OEM PC vendors to choose between offering only MS on most systems, paying probably ten times what they are now per machine to only offer it on some, or offering it on none, and you get a recipe for a market as far away from 'free and open competition' as is possible.

What? This article, and this news story, really has nothing to do with OSS. So before you start touting that "OSS is gaining momentum", recognize that this government is only reducing purchases made between themselves and Microsoft by 25%. It does not imply that OSS will be used as a replacement, because you could substitute "OSS" for "OSX" and come to the same conclusion if you were as fanatic about OSX as you are about OSS.

Way to go Taiwan! I expect many more Countries to move their Government IT infrastructures over to OSS in the year ahead.

Or maybe they're allocating the 25% savings to buying all Apple products.

I'm sure I am not the only one snickering at the irony at the comment about potential Fair Trade violation -- against MS, which is an Internationally convicted Monopolist. Which begs the question, are Taiwanese Lawmakers so stupid to make laws that prevent their Governemnt from having a real choice for purchases...

This sounds like the common strategy to deal with the Microsoft problem:

1) Draw a box around all existing Microsoft software infesting the government or company in question. Forbid the growth of any Microsoft software outside this box.

2) Once the Microsoft infestation has been contained and growth halted, slowly start purging the existing Microsoft software and formats with clean and open solutions like OpenOffice, OpenDocument, Apache, Linux, BSD, XML, etc...

I agree with the two points, however there is an important third component to ridding a company or government of Microsoft products.3. Purge any and all employees who are loyal to Microsoft and not the organization for which they work.

This is one area that seems to get overlooked too often when discussing organizations that are struggling to rid themselves of Microsoft products. In my experience it is not the actual document formats or application retraining that is the stumbling block to migrating to open

In my experience it is not the actual document formats or application retraining that is the stumbling block to migrating to open systems, but very often one rogue IT manager or employee who can best described as a "Microsoft guy."

Ain't this the truth. When I was contracting I ran into this time and again - some prick who didn't give a shit about the organization he worked for, but practically had an altar to Bill Gates in his bedroom. For him it was Microsoft, and everything else was a tool of the Great

MS has serious corporate affairs problems and its lobbying strategies are part of the game.

E.g. in Europe: When MS gets the scum of US lobbying to Europe and they are unable to adapt to Europe, no wonder parliament rejects them. Even EU-Commissioner Wallström spoke negatively about Microsoft:"And I was very disappointed to learn that Microsoft has agreed to block Chinese blog entries that use words like democracy, freedom, human rights and demonstration." It seems like Microsoft is not alone in "bad company"." -- which implies the Commissioner openly called MS a "bad company".

Guess Taiwan will also be excited about those MS-"relations" to China.--

I mean, look at political radicals like DCI/TechCentralStation, or persons like Jonathan Zuck or Hugo Lueders which served Microsoft's interests in lobbying. No wonder they lose.

Whenever Ms is in trouble they hire a whole universe of unsound lobbyists which poisons their reputation in Parliament. Like the tobacco industry.

Microsoft lobbyists usually do serious mistakes which fire back on Microsoft.

What will those idiots do now? Hire everybody they can get and further ruin their reputation in Taiwan. Hire lobbyists which will execute the strategy the public expects. What will civil society do? Gratulate MS for the great aid to their lobbying efforts.

When will the Microsoft fanboi's admit that people don't like Microsoft because of...

Microsoft's Business Practices

and not because of some jealosy of Microsoft's success. If the latter were true, then why don't all of the anti-Microsoft folk also dislike all other successful companies?

I have a Microsoft True Believer(tm) in my organization. I've spoken to him at length for years. He has made the "jealous of success" argument before. He can't let go of it. The one universal constant is that Mic

Another argument you could use is a comparison with IKEA. They are pretty much successful too, and people are FAR less likely to dislike them. What could be the reason? Maybe that peoples' butts are not forced to be compatible with only that brand of chairs? Or that the sofas don't get a blue cushion of death each other time people sit on them?

22,894,384 (2005) in population, 13+ million people are online. Making legislative body to make policy against a major player in computing industry (Microsoft in this case), may create one of the most damaging ripple for Microsoft.

Although that 13.8 million internet users won't turn off their Windows machines over night, but it's plausable to tinker with the idea that Taiwanese government may legislate a similar policy to goverment contractors and corporations dealing business with Taiwanese government to enforce private sectors to depend less on Microsoft product. And knowning China and her relationship with Microsoft, this may be interesting to see how Chinese government will react to this plausable senario.

Is this the china that is behind Red Flag Linux or is this the China that buy from international companies soft/hardware and services to help keep their citizens inline?

China's politics on their own are already screwed up enough. Frankly it seems to suffer from an advanced case of split personality. This is nothing unusual, many "goverments" do things that seem to be at odds with each other but china just does it to the extreme. How can you really combine capatlism and communism in one country? By not look

"Exactly why does America still boycot cuba?"IMHO, Cuba now is a strategic enemy of state. Cuba is no more threat to US than Canada is to US, but the idea that Cuba one time in history pointed nuclear warhead toward US still can be viewed as recent history."So your suggestion of anything happening is absurd. if anything considerings china push of red flag linux this could be seen by the insane as a move by taiwan to please China."First, I merely suggested that it would be an interesting outcome. Even you

Oh sure it won't cause MS to go bankrupt. Not directly anyway. However I would say that a reduction of your share of the desktop market from almost 100% to 75% would cause a bit of a panic in any sensible company.

The worst bit is that someone apparently broke the connection Computer == Windows. This is bad. Kinda like thinking in america Democracy == Capatalism. They got a place in Cuba for people like that.

To many people even the suggestion of running another OS runs into a brick wall as computers is Wi

It very much could be a snowball. For each application added to Linux or Mac that raises the market share, so it makes it more viable for other applications producers to commit. Replace "application" with "hardware device" and do the same.

Then there's the issue that applications are becoming more and more web based. There are web-based project management solutions now, webmail, web-based CRM, web services for data etc etc.

I also think that Microsoft are going to find it harder and harder to sell OS. PCs

The point being, that Taiwan doesn't pay for most of their software to begin with due to lax to nonexistant copyright laws. If they aren't paying for it in the first place it doesn't matter if they cut the budget for it by 25%.

If they now only puchase 3 new copies instead of 4, but 4,000 are pirated it's not really a 25% impact.

He wasn't saying that 25% of Taiwanese governemtn sales aren't a big deal, he was saying that 25% of Taiwainese governemnt sales aren't really 2

It ain't the money, MS is filthy fucking rich and will continue to be so for a long time. It is that their absolute control of the desktop is crumbling.

There are some nasty people who have suggested that MS has benefitted greatly from pre-XP version of its software being so easy to copy. OS/2 was harder and copying Apples OS is pointless since it is tied to the hardware. How many people had MS Office at home because that was the CD they could borrow from work?

demanding that the government reduce purchases from the software giant by 25 percent this year

Note that this doesn't say install Windows on 25% less of the desktops. It says to spend 25% less on Microsoft software. Unlike others, I'm not going to imply that the Government is intending to pirate more copies, but instead suggest that initially they'll probably cut from other areas. Things like not purchasing Offic

In case you hadn't noticed, Windows is MS Software. I'll grant that they probably meant '25% overall', so if they can reduce total expenditure by 25% just by reducing MS applications, then that would satisfy the requirement. But that certainly doesnt prohibit them from choosing non-MS opatering systems, either.

In case you hadn't noticed... the title of the subject is "Microsoft software is not just Windows". So yes, I was and am aware that Windows is Microsot software, but it's not the only Microsoft software available.

In other words Taiwan could decide to keep the Windows operating systems and use other products on top of them instead of Microsoft office suites, databases, etc.
I'm not saying that is what they will do but it is still an option with what little information we can get from the article.

The parliament does not want to reduce expenditures by 25% overall! They want to reduce the overall percentage of purchases of Microsoft software for government usage. So total expendiure could even go up, as long as the overall percentage of purchases from Microsoft goes down by 25%.

From the article "Taiwan's parliament has voted to end its dependence on Microsoft software, demanding that the government reduce purchases from the software giant by 25 percent this year."

When choosing an operating system for government use, particularly in areas such as law enforcement, taxation, military, or legislative administration, the choice between open and closed source operating systems boils down to national security.

By choosing an open source system such as Linux, a nation has the power to audit and fix holes in the operating system which leave the government open to espionage. Choose Windows, and you will have to count on an American company to keep your computers secure from such glaring problems as the WMF bug. Choose Windows, and you will have to hope that American intelligence agencies and Microsoft billionaires and their buddies are honest enough to proactively discover problems, inform you of them, and fix them. Choose Windows, and you bank on Microsoft spending its money towards improving its existing products, (through, for example, exhaustive security audits), as opposed to earmarking that money towards ridiculous expansionistic endeavors into other business markets (too many to list here), and polishing up the next versions of their cash cows: Office and Windows.

Now, interestingly enough, this argument can be expanded to encompass concerns about corporate espionage. Do you trust your corporate secrets to Bill Gates?

If I was a MP in Taiwan, I'd introduce legislation to BAN government use of proprietary, closed-source operating systems. It's a matter of national security.

...Microsoft will help China upgrade their ICBM-installations using Windows-CE and Windows-Vista.In a comment, Bill Gates was quoted as saying: "We will help China bring clarity to the world (tm), especially to insignificant provinces on the south of their border."

But not because of licencing. Because of national interest. Recently a union threatened to shut down the power plants and oil refinery infrastrure via programming and the government was terrified at the prospect of not being able to get their software running, or, if something was done to damage it, fixed.

...threatened to shut down the power plants and oil refinery infrastrure via programming...

It's just amazing that it takes governments so long to learn this lesson. Any proprietry software is effectively hidden, and so is effectively a key that can be used by the company who has the source code. Billions and billions of taxpayer dollars could have been saved by using open, standard and commodity systems (IMO), instead of spending it on wasted client side CPU cycles, expensive windows licenses etc..

demanding that the government reduce purchases from the software giant by 25 percent this year..... said however that the resolution may not be binding because it runs against fair trade regulations in Taiwan.

Rather than dictate a reduction which may trigger a legal mess, why not create an "encuragement" program, such as returning into a department's budget the cost savings from altneratives. Thus, if an office uses MySQL instead of MS-SQL, then let them keep the money that would go for MS-SQL rather than

I would say this news is totally BS.Taiwan is still in its early stage of democracy. The opposite party have controled taiwan over 50 years. Six years ago, they losed presidential election. Now, the opposite party is trying its best to get the power back. They are willing do anything.

Last friday, parliament in taiwan was in a mass. They cut off 25% annual budget (of everything) just trying to stop current leading party to do anything. That is why you see this news. The f*ckers in Parliament do not care any

The 25% budget cut may have seemed to trigger the switch to OSS. But the same parliament that voted for the 25% budget cut also voted for OSS. It's not parliament vote -> government react, but rather parliament vote -> parliament realises its own stupidity and tries to patch things up. Given the unpredictibility of Taiwanese politics, they'd just as soon reverse themselves after a few fistfights.

While it's true that Taiwan, with its strong presidency, is a US-style democracy on the surface, its i

If they can cut 25% with no problems, then there's no "monopoly" at all. This is grandstanding. It's also stupid policy. They should try to get the best value for their money. If Microsoft offers the best value for their money, then they should go with it. If not, then they should go with something else. But arbitrarily eliminating a company's products from consideration only allows the competing products to charge more and/or get away with offering less functional products.

It is not arbitrary if it increases value.Value depends on many factors, of which cost is only one.It is not stupid to increase value.We have yet to see if Microsoft can have Taiwanese officals eliminated, as they can in the US. It is too early to suggest "no problems".

> They can replace it with OSX computers, thus spending a lot more money in the process, or they can use some Linux variety which will not support most of the software they need, requiring custom solutions and ports, thus spending a lot more money in the process. So which one will it be?

The real question is, do they want to save a lot of money in the short run or a hell of a lot in the long run?

requiring custom solutions and ports, thus spending a lot more money in the process.

And why not spend this extra money on a domestic company supporting/porting to linux? I really don't understand why their goverment should export money to the US when there are very good alternatives...

"Who said freedom was cheap?"So you're saying it's not costs that matter for a government, it's abstract values.

Also, who said Linux is freedom*. The value of open source depends largely on what you want to use it for.The value of being able to tinker with your OS is as much of value to a businessman/clerk as it is to you to tinker with your internal organs for the fun of it.

If you want freedom throw your PC through the window and run naked in the park.

So you're saying it's not costs that matter for a government, it's abstract values.

I didn't say anything of the sort. I simply stated that making a larger up-front investment in your IT infrastructure to save an ongoing cost would be cheaper in time. "freedom" in the context I used it refers to freedom from vendor lockin and forced upgrades through end-of-lining support of products.

The value of being able to tinker with your OS is as much of value to a businessman/clerk as it is to you to tinker with

XP a factor for a long, long time still? I thought Microsoft had some sort of support/redundancy cycle that very much prevented such a thing, especially if maintaining security is a concern to the customer, and XP has been around for a few years now.

In fact "China" is a universe of different nations and cultures. Taiwan is a seperate state and belonged to China in history. Taiwan is no part of China and a totally different political system and culture. Today a reunification of china and Taiwan is as absurd as a reunification of India and Pakistan.

I don't think the Taiwanese government regards Taiwan as a part of Red China.
They insist on beeing an independend state.
Now, the Red Chinese Government questions that. So this is an existent international conflict.
What we believe is irrelevant. Of course there is no reason to regard Taiwan as a part of the current chinese state.
And Microsoft is caught in between and has to be very careful when it deals with Red China. Because otherwise the Taiwanese government will kick Ms in the ass.

Okay, let's try that one again, without hitting "Submit" when I mean "Preview":

There are a whole lot of Taiwanese people who would disagree with your characterization of Mainland (PRC) China's "ownership" of any part of the political system of Taiwan.

Just as one example, the presidential party in Taiwan, the Progressive Democrats, are officially pro-independence. (And depending on who you ask, so is the other major party at least on paper; they're just more conciliatory towards the PRC.)

You are right, your comment is crap. Getting out of the dependency on a single company as it is now exists with Microsoft is reason enough -- no matter where that company is based. Whether or not there are problems with the US (there are, and not surprisingly so) might be a factor, but by far not as important as the problems of single vendor lock in that already exist and will become bigger in the future unless something is done against it now.